In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Having driven over 15,000 miles across the USA this year, we’ve seen hundreds of them. Crosses beside the road. Each one saying, “a life was lost here.”

It’s a sobering reminder of the risk we take every time we get behind the wheel.

In some states, instead of homemade crosses, there are signs posted by the Department of Transportation. Wyoming takes down homemade memorials and replaces them with a sign showing a dove on a broken heart. Driving by at 55 mph, the Squid Wagon’s top speed, they look a lot like the logos on portable defibrillators.

The signs in South Dakota are easier to understand. They feature a red “X” to mark the spot, and the thought-provoking words, “Why die?” In some places, there are two, three, or four of these signs together. Four lives lost here.

Doing research for this essay, I found that there’s actually a name for them: Descansos. It’s the Spanish word for a place of rest, a memorial erected at the place where someone died.

Seeing one makes me think, “Am I driving carefully enough?” But in all my life, I’ve never come face-to-face with a traffic fatality.

Until last week.

We’d just driven 750 miles from North Carolina to Florida, and after arriving at Dad’s house, we needed to take a walk and stretch our legs. We decided to look up an old friend we hadn’t seen in over 10 years.

“Are you sure you don’t want to take my car?” Dad asked. No, we assured him, we wanted to walk.

It was an OK walk, except for the lack of sidewalks. I was especially nervous about bad Florida drivers, so I waded through the mud and high grass and trash by the side of the road, to give them plenty of room.

On our way home, Barry and I were walking along holding hands. Nervously, I kept pulling him further away from US 1, over into the puddles.

And then my day was shattered by a terrible sound behind us.

I turned, and as I took in the scene, I started running back towards the intersection. All I cared about was the large man who lay in the center lane. I was pulling out our cell phone as I ran, saying to Barry “He’s not moving – he’s not moving – please, let him be OK!”

I was running, but everything was in slow motion. I took in the motorcycle pieces scattered across the road and the large white van pulling over to the shoulder, but I couldn’t figure out how it happened.

A small group converged in the middle of the road. A woman got on the ground with the prone man. “He’s breathing,” she said, her face on the pavement beside his helmeted head. Cars were passing only a few feet from the two of them, and I began waving them out to the right-most lane. A few minutes later, a police car arrived, and Barry and I left. We hadn’t actually witnessed the accident, and we didn’t want to be in the way.

I was shaking as I walked. The man hadn’t spoken or moved a limb, but his midsection was twitching in a frightening way. Was he going to be OK?

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept reviewing the scene, trying to figure out how he’d been hit, and how he could survive his injuries. There had been no blood, only the ominous dark stains of oil and coolant and fuel under the pieces of his motorcycle.

The next morning, my Dad pointed out a small newspaper article. A 26-year-old man was airlifted to a hospital, where he died. I turned away, tears in my eyes.

His name was Cory. He was engaged to be married in a few months, and he left behind a 7-year-old son. He was a chef at the Moorings Yacht Club.

Cory was killed by a large van that made a left turn out of a parking lot onto the busy highway. The driver must have been in a hurry, or on the phone, because Cory was hard to miss. It was broad daylight, and he had a bright orange motorcycle. He was not a small man. He wore a full-face helmet that matched his bike, despite the fact that helmets are not required in Florida.

A day later, a cross appeared at the intersection. It said “RIP Cory,” and it was decorated with red foil heart-shaped balloons. Every time I passed it, my eyes were drawn to it. Once, as I sat at the stoplight, I watched a jogger pause and look at the photos of the deceased. I felt a lurch in my chest, thinking that Cory was still alive when I saw him.

My happy vacation was subdued, impacted by the senseless death of a stranger. It was a first for me, walking by the scene of a fatal accident, and I won’t ever see motorcycles the same way.

Please, drivers, slow down and be more careful. Whether it’s a motorcycle, a bicycle, a jogger, or another car, it’s a person. None of us wants to be obliterated, replaced by a cross by the side of the road. I don’t ever want to hear that terrible sound again, and I still cry for Cory, even though I never knew him.

About 15 years ago, when my mother was alive, Barry and I were helping move some furniture in a new condo my parents bought in Sebastian, Florida. My mother sat on the bed and looked out the window at the Indian River view.

“We need to move the bed over this way,” she said, frowning. “Then I won’t see those dreadful shacks when I wake up in the morning.”

Puzzled, Dad walked over to the window and peered out at the small houses next door. “What’s wrong with those?” he asked. “That’s Old Florida!”

In my family, Old Florida is a catch-all term for everything about Florida that is charming, funky, and more than 10 years old. It is the antithesis of condos, mega-houses, shopping malls, and new construction. A moldy pink house with jalousie windows — that’s Old Florida. A restaurant where the waitress calls you “Hon” — that’s Old Florida. Funny little towns like Pahokee, on Lake Okeechobee — that’s Old Florida.

My Dad is an expert on Old Florida. He was telling me about a restaurant the other day, a place where they serve frog legs and swamp palm soup. “It’s Old Florida,” he said. It was enough of a description for me.

Actually, my Dad, himself, is Old Florida. Despite his distinguished career and the journalism textbooks he’s published, he wears shoes with holes in them and sweatstained floppy hats. Sometimes, he calls waitresses “Sweetie.” He tells stories about growing up in Miami without any shoes or shirt, shinnying up trees to get coconuts, and climbing neighbor’s fences to steal avocadoes. He used to swim off the Million Dollar pier, wearing a homemade snorkel and a mask made from an inner tube and a piece of round window glass.

Dad had a list of errands to run the other day, normally something I’d try to avoid. But my ears pricked up when I heard he was going out to Peterson’s Groves to “buy some citrus.” I wasn’t the only one. When Dad headed out to run his errands, Barry and Joy and I all piled into the car.

Peterson’s is Old Florida.

Drive out to the edge of rapidly-growing Vero Beach, past the shopping mall and the stark new developments hidden behind long concrete fences. On 66th Avenue, look for the hand-painted sign in the old wagon. When you turn down the sandy drive, you’ll be transported to another place and time.

In the center of the property is a cluster of ramshackle barns and chicken houses, a packing house, and a ton of kitsch. Before he’d even parked, Dad fell in love with a lifelike plastic goose perched on a piece of rusty farm equipment. I hopped out of the car and immediately went to say hello to the goats and pigs. “Look who made it through Thanksgiving,” said Dad, pointing at a huge turkey. We wandered through the chicken house and took pictures of the peacocks. “Guinea fowl!” called Barry, upon hearing the rusty pump squeak of one of his favorite critters.

We walked along the edge of the orange grove, next to a little fenced pond full of waterfowl. An obnoxious goose scolded us at the top of his lungs, but the ducks who shared the pen ignored him. On our right hand were the orange trees, not too tall, their branches laden with green citrus fruit.

On the store’s long covered porch, we found our goal: Wooden bins of oranges and grapefruits and bushel bags to pack them in. Prices were marked on blackboards or cardboard signs. A nearby galvanized bucket offered sunflowers for sale. Two cats lounged at our feet, got into a brief catfight, and streaked off in different directions.

We went inside, where juicy samples sat on the counter next to coconut candies, pralines, and candied orange peel. A broad-shouldered older man behind the counter was eating fruitcake out of a cardboard box, and he offered us a piece. Despite my love of fruitcake, I declined. I had just picked up a sample piece of grapefruit, and I was busy getting grapefruit juice all over his merchandise. A long-time customer, Dad addressed the man as “Mr. Peterson.”

I drifted towards the back of the store, past shelves of marmalade and jam and orange air freshener. The further back I went, the dustier the merchandise became. There were alligator heads and glass frogs and cheap plastic magnets that said Vero Beach, Florida. Seashell windchimes dangled from the ceiling. My favorite items were the starfish wearing tiny sunglasses, painted with polka-dotted bikinis.

Whenever I go into Peterson’s, I think I should buy a lot of stuff, because that will help preserve this bastion of Old Florida. Then I look more closely at the tawdry merchandise and decide the best thing to buy is oranges and grapefruits, and maybe a jar or two of jam. Luckily, Mr. Peterson has been expanding into some vegetables, and on this trip, we picked up some cherry tomatoes and a lovely kohlrabi. When we commended him for his lovely eggplant, he said, gruffly, “I have to diversify.”

I’m sure Mr. Peterson has been invited to sell his property to developers for lots of money. I’m glad he’s holding out, and I tell myself it’s practical: Somebody in the United States has to grow oranges and tomatoes and kohlrabi; we can’t import all our food from Chile and New Zealand. But baby goats and peacocks and ramshackle buildings are not practical. They’re the last vestiges of Old Florida, and thank goodness someone, not just Dad, is preserving it.